Before His Lord Of The Rings Movie, Stephen Colbert Co-Wrote A Comedy Based On A Cult Sitcom

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The Comedy Central series "Strangers with Candy" was a deliberately off-putting, forthrightly crass sitcom that served as a dark mirror to the perpetually rebooted "Degrassi" franchise (or, rather, a satire of ABC's After School Specials). The show was set at the fictional Flatpoint High School and followed the whimsical adventures of the teens and teachers that attended and taught there. The protagonist and narrator for the series, however, was Jerri Blank (Amy Sedaris), a 46-year-old former sex worker and serial criminal. Jerri declares in the opening narration that she's been to prison, took a lot of drugs, and even "stole the TV."

But now she's determined to get her life in order by returning to her freshman year in high school.  Jerri attends classes alongside the show's teen characters, most of whom are supernaturally square and innocent. "Strangers with Candy" is tasteless and surreal, so it naturally garnered something of a cult following over its 30 episodes. It ran from 1999 to 2000, right when "shock" humor was on the rise, and it was certainly out on the bleeding edge. Sedaris co-created the series with Paul Dinello, Mitch Rouse, and future "Late Show" host Stephen Colbert, who's now co-writing a "Lord of the Rings" film sequel. That same quartet had previously created the 1995 Comedy Central sketch comedy series "Exit 57." 

Perhaps a few years too late, Colbert, Sedaris, and Dinello (sans Rouse) eventually re-teamed to write a "Strangers with Candy" prequel feature film, which hit theaters in 2006. The movie was never part of the original plan, but the trio was working on their 2003 book "Wigfield: The Can-Do Town That Just May Not," and they just kept coming up with good dialogue for Jerri Blank, as Sedaris discussed with the AV Club in 2008.

The "Strangers with Candy" movie made some dramatic casting changes to its predecessor. Maria Thayer, who played the character of Tammi, was the only actor who played a teen on the show to appear in the prequel film. Luckily, the "Strangers with Candy" TV series' cult fanbase was large enough to attract multiple celebrities, so the movie features lots of special appearances. Indeed, Matthew Broderick and Sarah Jessica Parker both show up here, as do Philip Seymour Hoffman, Ian Holm, Allison Janney, Justin Theroux, and a pre-"Parks and Recreation" Chris Pratt. It's not one of Pratt's best movies, sadly.

Elsewhere, Paul Dinello and Stephen Colbert reprise their respective roles from the original show as wimpy art teacher Mr. Jellineck and history teacher Chuck Noblet ... two characters who also happen to be not-so-secret lovers.

As you've likely put together by now, then, the "Stranger with Candy" TV series got a lot of comedic mileage from the idea that it was getting away with something. It was never a huge success, but its bizarre tone made it feel like its creators had managed to slip something onto the Comedy Central airwaves without asking permission. The prequel movie, on the other hand, suffered from having to infiltrate a far wider marketplace. It, too, wasn't a hit, but the presence of celebrities, and the fact that it was expanded from something so small, gave it a whiff of commercial approval. Even so, it felt a lot less subversive than its predecessor.

Similarly, Colbert enjoys a massively prolific TV career nowadays, but he's only ever written this one film. Those who know him solely from "The Late Show" may even be shocked to see the kinds of sex, crime, drugs jokes on display here.

Again, it should be noted that the "Strangers with Candy" movie isn't very good. It's less subversive and fringe-y than the TV series, but more than that, it's just not very funny. It was never going to be a blockbuster, but its $2.3 million take at the box office still seems low to me. 

Critics also had middling feelings towards the movie, and it currently boasts a just-okay 51% critical approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes (based on 102 reviews). Mark Olsen, writing for the Los Angeles Times, felt that the film couldn't justify its existence from a creative standpoint. The movie "seems like a lackadaisically expanded episode of the television show," as he put it. His point being, if the "Strangers with Candy" TV series was a spoof of ABC's notorious After School Specials, then the movie version had lost sight of that. 

Other critics were on the movie's wavelength. Writing for the AV Club, the venerable Nathan Rabin understood its off-kilter sense of humor and felt that the film was very akin to the TV series; it was just less amusing. Still, he agreed with Olsen that the underlying satire of the "Strangers with Candy" property was less effective in cinematic form. "On television, 'Strangers With Candy' sneered at the peppy clichés of afterschool specials, but the narrative demands of feature films can't be laughed off so easily, and none of the film's skimpy plot threads offer much of a payoff," he observed.

Of course, by 2006, Stephen Colbert had completed a successful stint on "The Daily Show" and had already started his spin-off "The Colbert Report." With a (questionable) "Lord of the Rings" movie now on his docket, his "Strangers with Candy" days are long behind him.